I originally set up this blog to showcase the old Dope Rider comic strips I occasionally did for High Times from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s. With High Times' 40th anniversary issue in 2014, I restarted the strip and have been doing my best to get one done for each issue. A few months after they appear in the magazine, I will archive them here. Note: all images are copyrighted by Paul Kirchner.

If you'd like to purchase Dope Rider merchandise, visit my Dope Rider Store at CafePress.com and click on a design you like. Your patronage is most appreciated!

Monday, January 9, 2017

Dope Rider, "Firebird Motel"

I love the neon motel signs you see in the American Southwest, especially along the old Route 66 in places like Albuquerque. This sign is an adaptation of one I found on Google images.

My friend Tom Conroy once told me that the buttes you see standing above the desert floor date from an ancient war fought by aliens on planet earth; when an anti-matter bomb exploded, the stone directly underneath it was left intact. I liked that idea and fit the reference to the Anti-Matter War in this episode.

2 comments:

I love this one. I like that you do some fleshing-out of the backstory of Dope Rider's psychedelic corner of the American southwest. I would love to read a whole comic book about Dope Rider and his pals' exploits, or at least another 4-pager for High Times.

Glad you enjoyed it. It would be fun to do a four-pager again but I definitely couldn't do a four-page strip every month. The trouble with one page is that a lot of story ideas can't be squeezed into a single page. But anyway, I'm happy to be bringing Dope Rider back to High Times and I'll keep it up as long as I can.And there will be a book, probably in 2018. By that time I'll have enough strips to justify it.